


Sense Memory

by Vongchild



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: 5 Times Fic, Canon-Compliant, Drift Hangover, Drivesuit Scars, Dubious Consent, F/M, Ghost Drifting, Pre-Movie, Smut, kwoon floor sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-29 15:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vongchild/pseuds/Vongchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drift hangover makes them do it.</p><p>Not a shipping kind of story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sense Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to apologize for this fic, and then I decided "No! I'm just going to own it!" So. I wrote Tamsin/Stacker drift hangover dubcon and I am not sorry.

 

The first time: Tamsin climbs down from her bunk in the middle of the night and into Stacker’s bed, and Stacker thinks he’s dreaming so he lets her. In the morning, when they are naked and tangled in the blankets, Tamsin looks at the love bites blooming across her chest and says, “Shit.”

Over coffee and reconstituted scrambled eggs in the academy mess hall, Tamsin tells Stacker, “I don’t think it’s either of our faults. It’s like they warned us. Ghost drifting. We had a long day in the simulators and it just. Happened.”

“I’m worried I may have forced myself on you,” says Stacker lowly. Tamsin puts a hand on his wrist.

“Hey. Stacks. I’m the one who climbed into your bed,” she says. “And when we’re awake, you’re not my type at all. I’m not upset. So don’t worry about it. Won’t happen again.”

*

The second time: they’re in the middle of a simulated version of Vancouver, and the kaiju is huge. Bigger than anything that’s ever come through the breach, and Tamsin jokes, “I wonder who we pissed off to get put up against this bastard.” There’s sweat dripping down both their backs by the time the monster falls and the mission ends. Stacker’s on autopilot all the way to the showers.

The next moment he is aware of himself, his face is between Tamsin’s thighs and she has a leg over his shoulder. Hot water rains down on them. She leans against the tile wall and moans something Stacker doesn’t understand.

He pulls away. Tamsin looks down at him, eyes widening like she, too, is just now realizing where she is. “Oh, shit,” she says, sliding her leg off of Stacker’s shoulder. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

Stacker gets up and goes to a different stall to finish showering.

“I don’t know why this keeps happening,” says Tamsin, once they’re both dressed.

“Twice is not _keeps happening_ ,” replies Stacker, but he’s shaken. He can still taste her in his mouth.

*

The third time: after Coyote Tango’s second kill in Lima, they come out of a two-hour drift and keep mirroring each other’s gestures. Stacker has a bad feeling, and he says to Tamsin that he’s going to go sleep somewhere else tonight. Just in case. She nods.

Nothing happens. In the morning, they meet for breakfast and it seems like the worst of the hangover has worn off. “Please don’t start avoiding me, Stacks,” says Tamsin, watching him crunch into a piece of bacon.

“I’m not avoiding you,” he says. “I’m just taking precautions.”

“We sleep in the same room every night. We’re around each other constantly. We’ve had two slip-ups in two years,” she says. “Outside of that, I’m not attracted to you and you’re not attracted to me, so I don’t see what the danger is.”

“The danger is that, twice now, we’ve come out of some kind of altered state of perception in the middle of doing things that neither of us would agree to otherwise,” says Stacker. He has caught himself remembering moments that he recoils from, even as some part of him searches for more detail, and it leaves an uneasiness in his stomach. “That’s what the danger is. We may need to speak to someone.”

“Around here, they’ll just laugh and tell us _be glad you aren’t related_ ,” snorts Tamsin.

Eventually, even the most residual effects of the drift wear off, and their steps fall out of sync. Stacker is wary of getting back into a drift, even a simulated one. He’s anxious about sleeping, too. Sometimes he remembers Tamsin’s flesh beneath his lips, her fingers against his scalp, and the sharp sound of her breath through her teeth. It makes his stomach twist. Fully conscious, he knows, she wouldn’t want any of that, and he doesn’t want that from her. He drills alone in the kwoon late at night. Self-imposed insomnia.

“You’re totally avoiding me,” says Tamsin, stepping onto the mat, hanbo in hand. “Up for a match?”

“I don’t know,” says Stacker.

“I’m rusting over here,” says Tamsin. “Come on, this only has to be weird if you make it weird.”

“Alright,” says Stacker, taking a ready stance. They fight the way they always do – he is precise and methodical, with perfect form and a height and weight advantage. She brawls, with tricky weight shifts and leg locks and nothing held back. They don’t keep track of points. There is only the rhythmic clack of their sticks against each other; the steady beat of two people perfectly matched. It’s almost like being in the drift.

When Tamsin gets the upper hand, it only takes her a neat flick of the wrist and thrust of her hips to leave Stacker flat on his back. She stands over him, panting heavily, hanbo planted between his thighs, and it’s so strange what happens next, how she slides her hands down the wood and settles into a crouch, how there’s an odd expression in her eyes that, in that exact moment, Stacker is certain is reflected in his own.

She breathes. Stacker breathes with her, perfectly matching her inhale and exhale, and when she leans down to kiss the clenched muscle in his neck, his mind refuses to resist.  They are on the same wavelength, and every touch zings like electricity.

In all honesty, it turns into something of a blur after that. He remembers: Tamsin’s hands on his wrists, holding them to the mat, and did she say, “don’t move,” or did she think it? He doesn’t move. He remembers her, warm and tight around him, and the rocking of her hips. He remembers her sliding off and telling him to sit up, and how he slid his hands under her tank-top and pressed his mouth against her rib cage until the suction made her gasp.

“Stacks?” asks Tamsin, fingers clenching against his shoulders.

Stacker looks up at her, blinking the fog away. “Shit,” he says, pulling his hands away from her skin like he’s been shocked.

“This doesn’t have to be weird if we don’t make it weird,” she says, standing up. She puts her pants back on.

“Three times in two years,” says Stacker, trying to reassure himself. “That’s nothing.”

“Exactly,” she says, offering him a hand and helping him to his feet. Just like that, it’s like nothing happened. No sexual tension. No sizzle in the air. Just Stacker and Tamsin, two people who compliment each other so neatly that even Caitlin Lightcap has to let out a low whistle when she reviews their drift numbers and say she’s impressed.

It’s sense memory that’s going to kill him, thinks Stacker, lying in bed and listening to Tamsin run the shower in their en suite. He imagines blue-black rosettes blooming over her ribs in the shape of his mouth. It keeps happening. He doesn’t want it to happen. But he’s also not sure he wants it to stop.

*

The fourth time: after a three-team drop off the coast of Busan, and once everyone’s back in the Shatterdome in Tokyo, someone breaks out a few cases of Sapporo for the crews. There’s not quite enough of it to go around. Tamsin and Stacker take turns sipping from the same bottle, ears ringing with sounds twice-heard. One of the LOCCENT officers is telling a story about two cadets she went to academy with, “A pair of high school football rivals from Iowa. Big, corn-fed, all-American guys. Anyway, we’ve all been training on the simulators for a while, finding our feet, and suddenly these two front-runners wash from the program. Turns out, one of them woke up with his mouth on the other guy’s dick and neither remembered how they got there.”

Tamsin and Stacker don’t look at each other. Tamsin takes the bottle out of his hand and gulps what’s left in it. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” she asks.

“In the room,” says Stacker. “You?”

“Same,” she says. “It’s been months. We’ve run two drops since then, tons of simulations. And, hey, there’s worse things.” She elbows him playfully. “We could be related.”

The victory celebration breaks up sometime after midnight, and they make their way back to the barracks. Tamsin flops onto Stacker’s bunk and watches him change into sweats. “I’m just worried how every time we assume we’re safe, it happens again,” he says.

“Once is not _again_ ,” says Tamsin. “You’re not thinking about Luna, are you?”

Stacker pauses. “A little,” he says. “I don’t think she’d very much like knowing I’ve had sex with her girlfriend. Are you thinking about Luna?”

“All the fucking time,” says Tamsin. She rolls off Stacker’s bunk and climbs up to her own. “I think she’d understand. Good night, Stacks.”

Stacker turns off the light and does his best to sleep, and he has dreams painted phosphorescent blue and filled with thunder. He feels the world rolling, like waves on an ocean. He is on a sinking ship. In the distance, he sees a great beast: maybe kraken, maybe kaiju. He is climbing the mast, and here is Tamsin, hair lit up like fire and she is wrapping him in her arms and pulling him close, her breath warm against his skin, singing a siren song as she pushes him beneath the waves.

Tamsin nudges him awake in the morning. “I think we’ve just got to stop fighting this,” she says, easing her leg out from under his.

“Did you have a dream about a shipwreck?” Stacker asks her.

“Yeah,” she says.

He licks his dry lips. He knows this taste.

*

The last time: Tokyo, after Onibaba, when Tamsin comes back from medical and climbs into Stacker’s bed. “I’ll explain later,” she says, tucking his arm around her shoulders, and he winces audibly when her head rests against the circuit burns. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly, sitting up. “I should have – I should have expected that. I’ve got burns to.”

Stacker turns on the lamp over his bunk. Tamsin gestures to her bare arm, to the angry red lines that stripe her bicep and disappear under her shirt.  “We match,” says Stacker.

“They keep going,” she says, and she pulls her shirt over her head. No modesty between co-pilots.  The burns trace her collarbone, circle her chest, and cradle her ribcage.

“I have those too, Tam,” says Stacker, and she takes one of his hands and presses it to her side, and he can feel the heat radiating off the burns and see in her eyes how much the touch must hurt but she presses his palm flat.

“Please, Stacks,” she says. “I’ll explain everything in the morning. Just. Right now, I just need to be held.”

Stacker nods, and slips his arms around her, and it hurts but it’s not so bad. He turns off the light. The skin on her shoulder is warm beneath his lips. 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Limerence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012122) by [quigonejinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn)




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